COMMENTARY
 by Ben Adler |
House Republicans' pointless votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act are getting all the media attention lately. But more quietly, the GOP has also been passing a slew of troubling bills that would threaten critical infrastructure, hurt the environment, and reduce quality of life in communities across the country. They offer a preview of what we could be in store for if Republicans win more power this fall.
And some even have a chance of becoming law before then. Because the Republican attacks are in the form of bills to fund the government, Democrats who control the Senate and White House could have a hard time stripping all the harmful measures out of them.
“Republicans don’t control the Senate or White House, so they can’t repeal laws, but they can gut them by killing the funding,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, told Lean Forward.
First, House Republicans went after the Environmental Protection Agency with an axe so large it makes a medieval beheading look restrained. The bill, approved by the Appropriations committee, cuts the agency's budget by $1.4 billion from last year—a whopping 17 percent.
But that's just for starters. House GOPers are also trying to thwart the EPA’s ability to enforce current law by limiting its administrative power. They attached a host of unrelated measures to the bill that would strip the government of its ability to do everything from preventing damaging mining or grazing on federal lands to protecting some endangered species.
“The most anti-environment House in American history is rolling back environmental safeguards that people want, like clean air and clean water,” said Alex Taurel, legislative director for the League of Conservation Voters. “It helps only their campaign contributors, like big oil companies.” Nadler called many of the provisions on land use “a give-away to cattlemen.”
Elsewhere, Republicans avoid the political risks of identifying specific items to be cut by instead focusing on larger, nondescript-sounding programs. “Congress doesn’t want to say we’ll cut resources for children’s cancer or elderly people with asthma, so they give lower figures for very big items such as the Office of Research and Development,” Scott Slesinger of the Natural Resources Defense Council explained to Lean Forward.
But the effect is much the same: The cuts would indeed reduce the EPA’s ability to study the effect of various pollutants in causing asthma and cancer.
It goes on: Republicans are also cutting the EPA's budget for monitoring compliance with environmental regulations—threatening the agency's ability to properly fulfill its core function. And they're going after federal help for clean water and sewage treatment—a move that doesn't just threaten public health, but also means fewer good paying jobs building and maintaining clean-water infrastructure.
Even the sort of mom-and-apple-pie programs in the Interior Department that Republicans used to make exceptions for would be decimated. The National Park Service, for instance, would get $135 million less than last year, which environmentalists say could lead to deterioration in park quality and shorter open hours, due to ranger layoffs.
It's not just environmental issues. In funding the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Republicans failed to increase money for Section 8 vouchers, which help provide affordable housing to struggling Americans, to keep pace with fast-rising rents. That would mean there wouldn't be enough money to fund all the vouchers already in use, much less expand the program, housing advocates say.
Funds for public housing are on the chopping block as well. “It’s less than is necessary and required to maintain the existing program,” notes Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “This comes on top of cuts last year,” she adds.
It may be hard for Republicans to pass many of these measures while Democrats control the Senate and the White House, though some could end up surviving. But if Republicans win control of Congress and the White House in November, it would be a very different story. And that’s what really scares environmentalists.
“They are showing what could happen if the guys who have been running the House have enough votes in the Senate to get this stuff through,” said Slesinger.
Taurel agreed. “With a President Romney,” he said, “a lot of this stuff would probably become law.”
Ben Adler is a contributing writer for The Nation and federal policy correspondent for Next American City.
Leave a Comment:
Ben Adler, MSNBC should have you discussing this for ten minutes, on every hour of programing, all the way through to November. What you are talking about is our reality check on what elections mean. Same thing as President Obama keeps trying to tell us, but, having trouble getting the Independents to understand. Keep after it - our Nation needs your voice. Obviously, a lot of State elections didn't have a reality check in 2010.
The GOP is living on another solar system divorced from reality. The GOP would set the U.S. back many years by repealing the protections to the environment that the EPA has installed by law. The GOP wants to do this so that oil and gas companies can build more tar sand pipelines, like the one that ruptured in the Kalamazoo River poisoning it with toxic bitumen that sinks to the bottom of the river because its heavier than water. The $800 million spent on the 2010 Kalamazoo river tar sands disaster in Michigan has failed to clean up the river and marsh areas adequately. The problem is that no one seems to know how to clean up bitumen oil spills. Bitumen is a nasty corrosive and highly toxic substance that eats the steel away in pipelines. The dangers of the Kalamazoo pipeline rupture have been under reported by the media. If the tar sands with its toxic bitumen gets into the Great Lakes watch out because we will never get them clean. Fresh water is precious and valuable but oil and gas companies seek to destroy them for short term profit.
The bottom line is watch out for the XL pipeline. What we need is more green energy not more GOP deregulation so oil and gas companies can run amok. But if the Kalamazoo fiasco and the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico oil disaster weren't enough for you then vote for the GOP that we can have even more expensive disasters from oil spills. The GOP does not care about the environment only the short term gain of profit for its campaign contributors.
It's responsibility of Congress of both houses to pass a budget which then gets signed by the President. The House has met its responsibility while Reid's Senate has not. This strategy of purposely not reconciling Reid's budget with Ryan's would allow spending to remain at 2008 elevated level. This reduction of spending which you cry foul now would have been the same result had Reid put forth a budget which was reconciled with the House's budget.